The Browns' injury curse hits a new low

BEREA (AP) -- As word spread across Browns country that center LeCharles Bentley had seriously injured his knee on the first 11-on-11 play of training camp, fatalistic Cleveland fans all had the same thought.
Cursed again.
How else to explain another freak injury to a high-profile player?
"No doubt in my mind this team is cursed," said Jack Copley of Brunswick, who attended Friday's practice with his wife, Phyllis. "If you're picked by the Browns, you're going to get hurt.
"It's sad. Every time we get a player who we think is going to turn it around here, something bad happens to him."
Sure seems like it.
So far
Since coming back to the NFL as an expansion team in 1999, the Browns have been snake-bitten by injuries, especially severe ones to first-round draft picks and star players. Some of the bumps, bruises and breaks have included:
Mammoth offensive tackle Orlando Brown gets struck in the eye with a penalty flag thrown by a referee during a 1999 game, an injury that ends his season and causes serious damage.
Quarterback Tim Couch, the No. 1 overall pick in 1999, survives a season-long sacking as a rookie then breaks his hand on the final play of practice in 2000 when he bangs it on the helmet of a rushing linebacker.
Linebacker Jamir Miller makes the Pro Bowl in 2000 -- still the only Browns player to do so since '99 -- but ruptures his Achilles' tendon in the first preseason game of 2001 and is forced to retire.
Offensive tackle Ross Verba signs as a free agent to strengthen a porous line, but tears his biceps muscle in a preseason game and misses the 2003 season.
Tight end Kellen Winslow, the Browns' top draft pick in 2004, breaks his leg in Week 2 at Dallas trying to recover an onsides kick in the final seconds and misses the rest of his rookie season. Five months later, he wrecks his motorcycle doing tricks in a parking lot and misses all of 2005.
Cornerback Gary Baxter, who started 46 straight games for Baltimore, starts five in a row in his first year with Cleveland but tears his pectoral muscle making a tackle in Week 5 and misses the remainder of last season.
Wide receiver Braylon Edwards, finally emerging as a playmaker after a slow start made slower by a staph infection in his elbow last season, scores two touchdowns in the first half against Jacksonville on Dec. 4 before tearing a ligament in his right knee. He undergoes surgery a month later and isn't expected to be back until Oct. 1.
Routine play
On Thursday, Jim Klempay was on the Internet when a message came across in a chat room for Browns fans that Bentley, the club's biggest free-agent signing of the off-season, had gotten hurt on a routine running play with the players only wearing shoulder pads and helmets.
"I couldn't believe it," said Klempay, of Avon Lake. "I thought somebody was trying to start a fight or something. I wanted to be sick."
The Cleveland native's season-ending injury hurt Browns fans a little deeper.
Bentley, a standout at Ohio State, had come home to play for the Browns, a team he followed passionately even while making two Pro Bowls for the New Orleans Saints.
In addition to anchoring the line, Bentley's arrival was viewed as a turning point for the Browns, a player who could help return the team to prominence.
It all looked so good, right up until the moment Bentley was loaded onto a cart with his left knee immobilized and driven off the practice field. He had surgery Friday and may need one year to recover.
General manager Phil Savage, who called Bentley "the face of our free-agent class," dismissed any notion that the Browns are jinxed.
"If this organization really believes that there is some validity to that, then we are all wasting our time," he said. "I think it is important for our team, coaches, scouts and the people who work here in the front office and with this organization to say that we are still going to get the job done.
"Things happen and there is always give and take. Sometimes you have good news, sometimes you have bad news, but the reality of it is life goes on -- things happen."
And for the Browns, they are usually bad.
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